making connections across the miles

Tag: trauma

at work, i often use ‘labile’ to describe an aspect of someone’s health. i might describe someone’s blood pressure as labile, for instance, which is not a good thing – it means it is unstable, going up and going down but not staying steady. i thought of this word today, in terms of me. how i was doing.

i didn’t even know that ’emotional lability’ was an actual term, but when i googled it, i was like, yup, that fits, that was me today. at first i was okay, feeling kinda good, adult, productive. and then i crashed into the pit. i was weepy, i was enraged, i was ashamed, i was scared, i was young, in quick succession and then back again to adult versions of all the same.

which is what happens when you don’t eat and drink your feelings. fuck.

there were good parts in the middle…i rode my bike in the sunny windy afternoon, got my heart pumping. i didn’t find that i wanted to eat bad stuff, i didn’t feel particularly hungry today at all. though i am hungry right now…i am going to have to do something about that before bed, i think. (actually, right now. banana and almond butter to the rescue! trying not to goop on the keyboard.)

i know part of my (disproportionate) irritability at my family earlier was being hangry, though at the time i felt justified and was pretty sure it was just coz they were so self-centred and annoying. and then i slammed a door (not on purpose) and stomped into my room and laid flat on my bed and breathed for a bit, and scrolled social media mindlessly for a bit more, and then i got up and apologized to them, because i really was being a horrible grump because of all the feelings that i wasn’t numbing with the gin & tonics that were starting earlier and earlier in the daytime hours.

***

pocketbrit and i didn’t talk much today. caught in our own personal hells, i think. it never feels good when we don’t talk. i think i realize how much i rely on her to check in when we have days like today, and it makes shame burn in my chest. (and shame is a clusterfuck.)

this morning, when she hadn’t replied to my messages, i was only curious. it was unusual but not unheard of, and when i checked the weather, it was a beautiful day there so i figured she was outside. by noon, i was more worried and also feeling ashamed and rejected. as mid-afternoon approached with no word, i was a mix of worried, and when she replied by saying “i’m here” i was angry relieved confused ashamed hating myself for being a fucking lunatic.

tonight, as i’m sitting here, missing her, i’m struck by the process of worrying goes for me, and how ashamed i get when i worry. how untrue the stories i start to author are, and how reflective of trauma they are. how i dip into and out of being little, and how being little hijacks my ability to be rational and understanding and fair. coz the things that i start to hear and feel are things like, she stopped caring. and she forgot aboutme. and it always ends with, i did something wrong and now i have to guess and if i don’t guess right it’s going to be even worse.

and usually, at that point, my adult brain steps in, tries to soothe the small one. attempts to settle her with more likely stories. like, she’s busy. her phone died and she didn’t notice. she’s gardening, you saw all the plants she’s looking after, that takes a lot of time! to maybe her parents are really after her today and her head’s really bad. but as the hours went on, even the adult starts panicking. she’s hurt. she’s sick. she’s really really not okay, and you don’t even know. and then, always, you wouldn’t even know if something bad did happen, no one is going to tell you anything anyway because you live across the world and besides, you don’t even count and then both little and adult ones are a mess, and the shame gets even huger because this is not even a normal response to someone not seeing my messages, i’m being a total loon and i know it.

and then my shame activates her shame, and our little ones start to box, and soon it’s a triggerfest, where we all feel like garbage and none of us gets what we want or need, where we will both go to bed with our small ones activated and scared and mad and sad and missing. which feels absolutely terrible, the worst, when what we want is to feel connected and close.

but sitting here now, and even earlier, i knew we were okay. we are okay. we have done this before, been here before. i’m not leaving, and neither is she, there’s too much here for both of us, it’s why it hurts so big, coz there’s such a big space left when we’re absent. it was a shit day coz it was shit day. and she will tell me and i will tell her and we will love and understand each other through it, like always, when we are better able to. we will smooth it out among all of us, and i think, i hope, that tomorrow will be kinder.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve come absolutely nowhere. When I’m feeling low and it’s all terrible, I think that I’m doing nothing. I’m weak and had might as well be dead. I’m feeling a lot like that today.

A big pull for me is that nothing has changed and nothing ever will, and that my life isn’t worth living.

And that’s hard. Really hard. Difficult to counteract. Because lots has changed, when I look at all of the individual details, and that’s just about to keep me going, except looking at the big picture, what’s changed? Absolutely nothing.

I think it’s easy to overlook how things felt before though. When I’m not thinking about it, I don’t remember the terrible agony of always wondering if I should tell my parents, and the subsequent agony of but what would they do if I told. And what I forget these days is how I ruminated over that every single day. And I mean every single day. I would berate myself for being weak, for doing nothing, I’d question if it would all be better, or all be worse. I would go over and over a million what ifs. All the while the stone of silence sitting heavy in my gut.

That changed, not really because I was ready or wanted it to, but I absolutely don’t regret it. Not one bit. I needed to stop being silenced in that way. And I’m not now, the people I feared being told most in the world have been told.

The part that makes me crumble and feel so alone? They dont really care, nothing has really changed. Now we’re keeping the secret together from my brother. Because he’s the important one, he’s the one they can’t bear to lose.

We’ve had a heavy list of words these last few days…the kind where you read them and thing ugh, fuck, I don’t want to write about that. And so I’ve been reading them and then ignoring them, waiting for something easier to come along. But hey ho, that doesn’t seem to happening so I’m just going to get back into it before my list of words that I haven’t done piles up even more.

I want loving people in my life. Um, duh, pocketbrit, who doesn’t?!? But I’m actually kind of embarrassingly desperate to have loving people in my life. I used to wish something terrible would happen to my parents (which I would’ve been devastated about – it wasn’t that I didn’t love them) in the hope that somebody else would come into my life who would be so gentle and loving and caring, and really look after me. Not just physical me, but emotional me. And I don’t just mean I wished it once, I mean I wished it a lot of the time. As a kid I was drawn to books with orphans in them, or kids that have had a really crappy time only to be taken in by somebody, to finally have that loving paternal relationship where they are finally safe. I would obsess over those adult characters that became loving guardians, and in my own inner world, I used to pretend somebody was coming for me, it was just a case of waiting it out.

Here’s the part that really hurts my inner parts: I’m an adult now. Nobody is coming. It’s too late. They might be little, but this body is not.

Lately things have been terrible with my therapist. Something she keeps bringing up is my problem with attachment. She’s said before that she doesn’t think I have ever truly felt safe. And now she has repeatedly mentioned how as soon as I start to like somebody (and feel more relaxed, more safe), I panic, and then I push them away. It’s not safe to me. The phobia of attachment, and the phobia of attachment loss.

Lately I’ve been pushing her really hard. Though honestly I’ve routinely been pushing her away since I started with her a year and a half ago. I’ve threatened (and tried to) quit countless times. It’s so difficult because I’m desperate to have her love me and care for me, but the moment we have a really good session, or she’s feeling caring and attuned and attached and I feel a little safer, let my guard down a little, it’s like sirens go off in my head. Guaranteed the next session she will say something that I take the wrong way (because I’m subconsciously on high alert for clues that she’s actually not safe, that I need to leave), and it all turns to shit.

I don’t have many loving relationships in my life at all. The friendship that I have with pocketcanadian is the biggest exception. And that’s surprising, because there is truly a lot of love. Even though this one too is fraught with regular pushing from both of us, it’s still standing and it’s still strong, and that surprises me and also doesn’t surprise me. I think we work hard at it, I think there’s a lot of common ground and understanding and leeway given. My therapist and I have talked before about how it’s been different with pocketcanadian, how I’ve managed to let her in, and not leave when I start to panic…what we came up with is that the friendship of ours took place without the direct contact of a normal relationship. There was almost this barrier to hide behind. We knew the most intimate details of the other, without even knowing the other’s name at the beginning. It was backward, and it kept a physical distance between us that allowed me to gain an emotional closeness without panicking. Of course as the emotional bond got stronger, the more I loved her, the more I relied on her, the more panicked I would get. But the amazing thing is this….we both love each other, and we both already understand, already expect it, and we both fight to overcome that flight response. Every single time. Something about the physical distance, and the anonymity leading to very deep truthtelling between us, meant that this friendship could become the most genuine and loving one in my life. That I have ever, and I’m certain will ever, have.

In contrast, I very recently told my other closest friend something that I was terrified to. And, that there was more I want to tell her. This is a friend that I have known for the majority of my life – a best friend that I see fairly regularly, that I used to spend all of my time with. I have never told her any of this part of my life because I have always been too scared, despite her sharing similar with me. But her response to the little that I told her? Extremely loving. I balled my eyes out for an hour and a half afterwards. But after the crying settled, I wanted to run. I still want to run. Every time I think about it I feel a swell of panic in my belly. And i keep telling myself that despite her loving response so far, she’s going to not believe me or be so disgusted when I tell her about my brother. In fact I convince myself that that will happen. And so I tell myself I won’t ever see her again, I’ll remove her from my life.

It’s crazy this attachment shit. It’s crazy how I desperately long for a loving relationship, and then panic and destroy the relationship as soon as it begins become loving. I know this is my trauma playing out, that it’s not my fault, but it’s also just so shameful.

i usually say it when i don’t want to say triggered, because that has become so incredibly overused in general parlance for things that are not remotely related to trauma or abuse. i use it interchangeably, i guess, because it makes sense to me, as a concept, and as a visceral response in the wake of trauma.

for me, being triggered feels activating: when a bunch of things in my body and my brain light up, while a bunch of other things shut down. and folks, lately, i am mega activated. my cat is dying. my work is draining me. it was just father’s day. my parents keep texting me. my kid is hating me, and, on the daily, accuses me of all kinds of mean horrific things because she is struggling and somehow i am her favourite target. my wife just had surgery that for some reason scared the shit out of me. i have no therapist at the moment. i am missing pocketbrit something fierce and cursing the idiotic number of miles and bodies of water between us.

so yeah, i am activated, all right. i am not sleeping, i am young, i am jumpy, i am easily terrified, i am weepy. i hate all of it.

usually people talk about their careers in terms of their professional or vocational life, but i don’t want to do that. i’m not sure my story is all that interesting, to start, and also, i’m aiming to maintain some tiny wee bit of anonymity here, and don’t much want to talk about what i do. […]

I’ve got plenty of regrets. I’m not going to go into all of them, because well, that would end up being an incredibly dull and longwinded post serving nobody, not even myself.

Today my mum brought up my brother with me. Apparently somebody drove into the back of his car (yet another in a series of unfortunate car dramas of his). She made a comment along the lines of “it’s like somebody up above has shoved a huge arrow pointing at him to attract car accidents”. I think I smiled, shrugged my shoulders in a kind of well, good way. She said I thought I’d tell you that because I thought you would like it…think he deserves it.

The way she does this, randomly brings it into conversation completely freaks me out. It makes me panic and dissociate. It doesn’t feel safe. I said that he drives like a complete idiot, so he does deserve it for that, yes. She didn’t take the hint, or rather, she just ignored it, as she has a tendency to do, and then said “I don’t get it, your relationship with him is worse than ever now, youre the one that said that you had a good relationship with him now”. My panic grows, my shame grows. I say that I don’t remember saying that. She tells me that I did, the day that I told her what he’d done (and yes I did say that). It’s her narcissistic way of saying that I’m now making it all difficult when I was perfectly fine with it back then. Its the insinuation (likely in my head, but I also don’t doubt that my mum is very much thinking it), that I chose how it is now. That I didn’t want them to tell him. That they said they would do whatever I decided. And they still would.

And I could…I could tell them to tell him that they know, to have it all out there, and risk him never coming back. And they would. So as far as they are concerned, they’re doing the perfectly right thing. They’re amazing parents. It makes me want to shrivel up in shame, even now just writing it. Because as far as they are concerned, the upset that I am harbouring (that they don’t even realise I am to the extent that I am), is entirely unfair and unjustified, and all because I’m selfish and too much, and making them out to be awful when they’re not. Except they aren’t taking any of the rest of it into account. They aren’t considering that my dad said literally nothing about it to me until I said that it was making me upset. His response was to completely and utterly pretend it didn’t happen. And then, when forced to talk about it with me, it was a family meeting that felt like a very cold business meeting. I was in tears being stared at by my parents who remained sat in their chairs. I was forced to come up with a plan of what we would do. I was forced to hear over and over about how if they told him, he would never come back. It takes no account for the pressure of all of it placed on me, it takes no account for the total control that was removed from my clutches and placed into theirs. I didn’t choose to tell. My mum asked and asked and asked until I said that yes it had happened. She already knew. I told her I didn’t want my dad to know, she said that he had a right to know and that she would be telling him. I was immediately forced to say what I wanted to do about it. At which point I think I said what I did about having a good relationship with him now that we were older. That things were different. I said it because it was true, and because I needed a grasp on staying as is was for a bit. Not having the rug pulled entirely out from under my feet. She was throwing everything at me in the most terrifying situation to me. She paid no real attention to the fact that I was very much not okay, she made it all about her, made a big deal about how she had to go to bed because she felt sick.

No regard has ever been given to how traumatic that day and the days following were for me. And I’m not surprised, they have no understanding of trauma. They laugh at the idea of somebody having PTSD who hasn’t been serving their country in war. It’s a preposterous concept. But what really hurts is that they have no desire to understand. To do some reading, to think about how to help, or what I might need. All the while thinking they’re being so amazing, and that I’m being difficult and extra. Making a big deal out of nothing. I hate the shame that I carry because of it. The shame that makes me cry and makes me want to hide, just for putting it out anonymously on the internet.

My biggest regret is everything that has come since telling. The not shouting, the not putting it all out there, the not bringing my brother into the huge mess that he doesn’t know exists but that he himself created. The staying close to them, the still seeing them, the not talking about it. The getting increasingly closer to my dad again, to the point where I don’t know if I would ever be okay with leaving them, even though I think that that might be the best thing I could ever do for myself. I don’t know how exactly I would do it different, and I know that no way would ever be perfect. But I just really regret the way that I did do it, even if it was the best I knew how at the time. It feels like the biggest mess that I won’t ever be able to clean up.

Trigger Warning – this post contains graphic details of abuse

I’m 25 years old. I’m alone in my house, perfectly safe. The doors are locked, I know I am alone. I am an adult, I have a voice, and I have control. It’s sunny outside. There’s all sorts of noises outside from cars and people milling around shopping, walking barking dogs, talking to each other.

Only I’m not 25 years old and I’m not safe. I’m only 8, I’m on his bed, and he’s put my knees up high after getting me to take my trousers off. I’m really panicking, I don’t want this, I really really don’t want this. I start to squirm, I make a noise that isn’t a cry but not far off. He looks at me with hatred and anger, pushes my legs down. The message is clear: this is happening, the more you try for it not to happen the more angry and the worse I’ll be. He goes in again, mouth against me, and I need him off. I NEED HIM OFF. I put my feet on his shoulders and I push really hard. He’s way stronger than me, but I have caught him off guard. I push him away, and I think I stop it happening. Or I stopped that happening at least. I can’t remember what happened after that, but I have a feeling I was forced to do things to him. Anyway my victory was short lived, and this was a regular thing for him to do to me. Want to hear something disgusting? Sometimes I didn’t mind it so much. Want to hear something even more disgusting? When the guy I have sex with sometimes tries to do this to me I get triggered. The thoughts going through my head…you’re not as good as my brother.

I tell myself I’m safe, that I’m feeling these things in my body but they arent really happening. I try to keep pressure against myself down there so that I know that it’s just me there, nobody else, and nobody can get access. And I’m 25. A triggered 25 year old that read a book that was too much, and now has the word “mouth” going around and around in her head, and in her body.

I’m not an adult, I’m 9 years old and he’s locked us in the bathroom, hes shoving his penis down my throat and forcing the action, and not letting me pull away, however hard I try. I gag, I feel like I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating and I can’t pull away. I blame myself because I suck my thumb and doing that made him think of it.

I’m an adult and I’m safe, and yet I’m not. I’ve spent days feeling sick, being tortured by all of this bullshit, and a whole lot more. I’m not just thinking of it, I’m in a ball, unable to move, its happening, and I keep my jaw locked and my legs tight shut. I fucking hate it.

i forget sometimes that mine and pocketbrit’s relationship was built upon the common experience of trauma. that we met online, on a forum where we could be anonymous but also share our stories and our struggles. and that what brought us there was the pain and hurt and desperation we were feeling daily.

and then we have days like we have recently, where we are both young and spinning and triggered, where we lash out and hurt each other and isolate ourselves, and i remember. and i hate it. i hate that she knows it. i hate that we’re so hurt and hurting, that our ability to tolerate and foster love and intimacy has been so profoundly affected.

by page 20, i had already found words that resonated with me deeply, that made me remember that i’m more than a big bag of triggers covered in skin; that i have more to offer pocketbrit than just activating her own hurt. these are those words: “trauma is hard to speak about and hard to hear about. but stories unshared don’t disappear; they return in relationships, silently taking prisoners. if the trauma remains unknown, unspoken, and unconscious, it does harm. telling your story to a compassionate witness, in contrast, can be healing.”

and that’s what my pocketbrit is: a compassionate witness. she is one of the most important people to whom i tell my stories. she is the person with whom i work through the majority of my core wounds. it is my relationship with her – the one built on all of this ugliness, all this stuff i want to forget – that is helping to heal my heart, that makes me feel like i might one day be okay. it is so fucking hard sometimes, but so far, despite the hard, despite the hurt, it is always worth it.

ah yes. the companion of nearly every survivor of a difficult childhood: striving for perfection.

many of us, myself and pocketbrit definitely included, had parents that expected it. yet no matter how excellent our behaviour or grades, or how closely we followed the rules, it eluded us, and eludes us still.

naively, i thought i had gotten over my need for perfection; i have certainly dedicated hundreds of hours to it in previous years of therapy, and thought i had kicked the habit. recent experiences tell me that i haven’t, not even close. maybe i’ve been in denial about it. or perhaps i was distracted by loads of other bullshit that was piled atop of this base, gutteral fear, that’s certainly feasible (eye roll). but my expectations of perfection are very much here, very much hurting me, very much making things difficult again in my life.

*

my expectation of perfection manifests in several different ways, most notably, with a lack of tolerance for mistakes. in myself mostly, but sometimes in others (like my kiddo…ugh i hate that). when i think of where it came from, it was partly that i didn’t hear a lot about what was ‘right’ about me. if i got 98% on a test, the question was about where the other 2% went – i mean, if i was so close to perfection, why couldn’t i just go all the way? or if i had a really great soccer game or a terrific hit in baseball, there would also be feedback on the really fast runner i didn’t stop, or the one pop fly that bounced out of my glove.

i described to someone recently – my wife, maybe, or my t – how i have a really long mental list of all that i have done wrong, the mistakes i have made, and with whom. and once the list starts approaching a certain length, i get more and more squirrely, all watery on the inside, because how much more will they tolerate? i mean, i messed that thing up last week, i forgot that really important date in her life, i really fucked up that other thing yesterday, i made that stupid joke that upset her, and oh my god, what about how disappointed he was when i didn’t follow through when i was supposed to?!

my missteps keep me up at night all the time. everyone says that mistakes are okay, but i know they’re not, not really. coz if i burn through their tolerance for mistakes (which i inevitably will, coz i’m nothing if consistent in my mistake-making), they will go. they will have no choice but to leave, because what self-respecting human will put up with the shittiness that is me?! at some point, they will call it, because how crummy i am will outweigh any of the things that might be okay or decent about me.

because the truth is, i am chronically terrified of being left. despite being a grown-ass woman in my 40s, despite the fact that many people haven’t gone…all i can think of is how many people did. after 17 years with my wife, i still think (and regularly) that i am one mistake away from her throwing in the towel. i am terrified of my daughter reaching the age of 18, when she can officially, legally disown me as her mother. i know pocketbrit is going to leave me one way or another, why wouldn’t she?

and i’m aware it sounds nuts. but it’s how i feel, way deep down. and whilst triggered, this striving for perfection is even more amped up, with the added bonus of it being even less likely that i meet the unattainable goal of getting it right 100% of the time. when i’m triggered, the mind-numbing fear of the consequences of these critical mistakes is also magnified, millions-fold. and my response? is fight, flight, and freeze, all, in quick head-spinning succession.

*

there have been huge chunks of time lately where i’ve self-isolated to the degree that i’m convinced that the only person i can count on is my therapist. and the only reason i can count on her is because i pay her, and i’m too lost in terror to even care about how sad that is. she is the only one who i’ve been able to tell the hard stuff, the ugly horrible stuff in my head, how much i loathe myself, how scared i get. i tell her, even though i know she will leave me too, but it won’t be personal like it will be when everyone else does.

she’ll leave me because i’m not a real person in her life, and because her professional obligations to me will end at some point. she’s here because she has to be. and even though that used to hurt me so so much, that somehow feels safer and better these days. she won’t leave because i messed up too horrifically, coz like she says, people messing up is her bread and butter. she will leave because she was always going to; she is not my mother (though at times i still want to throw myself at her and plead for her to reconsider it), or my family, or my friend. she will go because that was always the deal.

*

when i am finally become more adult, after days straight of spinning out and triggering and retriggering myself, i know that perfection is impossible. i know that striving for perfection comes from my inner little one, who is trying so desperately to avoid feeling shame and blame and judgement from others, like brene brown says. i know it’s coz i have the core belief that i am bad, not that i’ve done something bad. that i am a mistake, not that i made one.

and from this adult place, i know i can’t go on this way, i can’t go on feeding the illusion of perfection. it keeps me alone and lonely and disconnected. it keeps me walled away and prickly and inaccessible. it is the conviction of a little one for whom those fears were the reality, long ago, but i’m big now, i’m safe now, it’s not true. i can fuck up. lots and lots and lots. i am more than my mistakes. i am more than my trauma. i mean more than those things to the people who love me.

*

but this secure, solid adult place has been so fleeting lately, that i only have a few days at most before i’m riding the shame spiral again, dragging everyone down in my wake, berating myself mightily for landing myself here, yet again.

i am so, so tired.

this post was backdated; actually written on april 12/19

for whatever reason, the expression that came to mind was if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

such a gentle, understanding, kind thing to say…not. it probably came to mind in the first place because the sentiment and its tone feel familiar. it’s something my parents would say. it’s aggressive, no-nonsense, and also, leaves little room for alternate interpretations of reality. it leaves no room for how you feel, for any context. it’s kinda like, if you have anything other than accolades for me, then shut up and get out.

when i did some research into its origins, it apparently came from US president harry truman, a plain-speaking guy by all accounts, who told some of his staff that if they didn’t like how he did things, they could clear out of the way for someone who did. fair enough, really. he was the boss of the country, after all.

but one interpretation of the phrase made me first flush with shame, and then anger: that if you can’t cope with something, leave the work for someone who can. and also, if the pressure is too much to deal with, if you can’t hack it, perhaps just bow out.

oh, okay. yeah, let me try that. coz you know what, i’d love to get out of the fucking kitchen and have someone else step in and deal with the aftermath of early childhood incest, neglect and trauma. please do. please cope with it for me, so i can not be such a disaster. sign me up for that.

coz yeah, i’ve had it with this heat. i’ve had it with messing up my relationships, with battling shame, with hurting others and being hurt. i’ve had it with suicidal ideation. i would be more than happy to tag out so that someone can do the work of knitting my life back together. i’m game. i’d empty my bank account for that for sure.